by C. S. Harris
To Sebastian’s surprise, Jack Slade threw back his head and laughed.
Sebastian said, “That’s amusing?”
“Course it’s amusin’.” He glanced sideways at Sebastian. “Ye don’t find it amusin’?”
“I’m obviously missing something.”
Slade laid a forefinger beside his nose and winked. “Seems our good Bishop had more’n his fair share o’ secrets, hmm?”
“Did he?”
“Kinda makes ye wonder, don’t it, why he ordered that crypt bricked up all them years ago?”
“The Bishop?” Sebastian frowned. “What did the Bishop of London have to do with the decision to seal the crypt of St. Margaret’s?”
Amusement danced in the other man’s small, dark eyes. “Ye don’t know, do ye?”
“Evidently not,” said Sebastian dryly.
Slade used his tongue to shift his plug of tobacco to his cheek. “Who ye think was the priest in residence at St. Margaret’s thirty years ago?”
Sebastian said, “The Bishop began his ecclesiastical career as a doctor of classics at Oxford.”
“Maybe.” Slade leaned toward him, his breath heavy with the odors of rotten teeth and half-masticated tobacco. “But I knows what I knows. Ye look into it. Ye’ll see.” He paused, his small eyes practically disappearing into the folds of flesh as he smiled. “Captain Lord Devlin.”
“You’ve been talking to your son,” said Sebastian, his gaze drifting over the lowing cows, the pens of milling, bleating, terrified sheep. “I don’t see him around today.”
“Nope. But that don’t mean he ain’t here, watching ye.” Slade ran his hand down the Spanish cow’s flank. The cow shied away, bellowing, its hooves churning the mud and muck of the passage. “Ye think about that,” he said, and walked off into the noisy, pushing throng of men and beasts.
It seemed at first improbable to Sebastian that the Bishop of London might be the shadowy reverend who ordered the crypt of St. Margaret’s bricked up all those years ago. Yet the more he thought about it, the less certain he became. The exact year of the closing of the crypt had been forgotten, and no one had bothered to inquire too closely into the Bishop’s own past.
Leaving the market at Smithfield, Sebastian turned his horses toward the West End, to London House in St. James’s Square.
He found the Bishop’s chaplain seated on the floor of the Bishop’s official chambers, surrounded by piles of paper and looking harried. “I beg your pardon, my lord,” he said, shifting a large stack of folders, “but now is not a good time.”
“Just one question,” said Sebastian, pausing in the doorway of the disheveled chambers. “Was Bishop Prescott ever the priest in residence at St. Margaret’s in Tanfield Hill?”
Frown lines appeared in the Chaplain’s forehead. “Why, yes, of course. Back in—” He broke off suddenly, his eyes widening as comprehension dawned. “Good heavens.”
“Exactly.”
They went for a walk in the Square, skirting the perimeter of the octagonal-shaped iron fence that railed off the vast circular pond in the center.
“I was under the impression,” said Sebastian, “that the Bishop began his career at Oxford.”
“He did.” The Chaplain clasped his hands together behind his back, the black skirts of his cassock swirling around his ankles as he walked. “He believed, initially, that his vocation lay in scholarship. But then he discovered he possessed an affinity for ministry. When the benefice at Tanfield Hill fell vacant, it was given to him.”
“St. Margaret’s is in the Prescott family’s gift?” More than half the livings in England were under the control of private landowners, who either gave them to a younger son or cousin, or sold them like an investment.
“Yes. Before Francis Prescott took it up, I believe it was in the possession of a distant cousin.”
“When exactly was this?”
“That Dr. Prescott was in residence at St. Margaret’s?” The Chaplain thought about it a moment. “From sometime in the late 1770s until the end of 1782, I believe.”
“So it would have been Prescott’s decision to seal the crypt at St. Margaret’s?”
The Chaplain blew out his breath in a long sigh. “I suppose it must have been, although I couldn’t say for certain without looking at the records.” He glanced over at Sebastian. “I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. The Bishop was a man of God. A good, gentle soul, repulsed by violence. He could never have killed his own brother and then bricked up the crypt to hide the deed.”
Sebastian studied the Chaplain’s pale, troubled features. In his experience, most people were capable of murder, if pushed hard enough. And Sir Nigel certainly sounded like the kind of man who had pushed many men hard enough to goad one of them into murder.
“I was acquainted with him, you know,” said the Chaplain.
Sebastian glanced over at him in surprise. “You mean Sir Nigel?”
The Chaplain nodded. “I was only a child when he disappeared, but he was . . . most memorable. A huge man, loud and rather frightening, actually.”
“How did the two brothers get along?”
“Sir Nigel was . . .” The Chaplain hesitated, searching for the right words. He eventually settled on,” . . . a difficult man.”
“In what way?”
The Chaplain’s lips tightened into a thin line. “I see no point in speaking ill of the dead.”
“Even when one is dealing with murder?”
They walked along in silence for a moment, the Chaplain’s features set in troubled lines. After a time, he said, “Sir Nigel could be charming, even gracious. Yet he could also be quick-tempered, vicious, and vindictive. He was cruel to everyone, from his wife and servants to his dogs. The only creatures I ever saw him treat with any restraint and affection were his horses. As a child, I soon learned to avoid him whenever possible.”
“How did he get along with his brother Francis?” Sebastian asked again.
“Bishop Prescott was the youngest of five brothers and two sisters, with Sir Nigel the eldest. Given the large difference in the two men’s ages, I doubt there was much interaction between them.”
“But that would have changed, surely, when Francis Prescott took up the living at St. Margaret’s?”
“I suppose.” They had completed their circumambulation of the pond. The Chaplain glanced up at the crepe-hung facade of London House. “I wish I could help you more. But it was all so long ago.”
Sebastian nodded. “Thank you. You’ve been a tremendous help.” He turned toward where Tom was waiting with the horses, then paused to look back and say, “Did the Bishop ever talk much about his time at St. Margaret’s?”
“No. To be honest, I can’t recall ever having heard him mention it. I suppose that’s why I didn’t make the connection sooner.”
“You don’t find that unusual?”
The Chaplain frowned. “That he didn’t talk about it, you mean? At the time, I didn’t. But now that I think about it?” He let out a long sigh that left him looking suddenly older than his years, and considerably more likable. “It’s worrisome, yes. Very worrisome.”
Chapter 21
Sounds pretty simple to me,” said Gibson, his head bowed as he worked to carve a slice of meat from the serving of pork ribs on the table before him. “The Bishop obviously murdered his brother, then bricked up the crypt to hide the body.”
“I suppose it’s possible,” agreed Sebastian, leaning back in his seat. They’d come here, to an old inn near the Irishman’s surgery on Tower Hill, so that Gibson could grab something to eat. Sebastian wasn’t hungry. “By all accounts, Sir Nigel was unpleasant enough to provoke even a saint to murder. And while the Bishop might have been a far more pleasant individual than his brother, he doesn’t exactly sound even-tempered himself.”
Gibson glanced up. “Yet you’re not convinced. Why?”
“There are other possibilities.”
“Such as?”
“That Sir Nig
el met with foul play on Hounslow Heath after all, and his killer shifted the body to the crypt to hide it, knowing the crypt was about to be sealed.”
Gibson’s brows drew together in a thoughtful frown. “Sounds like a risky thing to have done, if you ask me. There are nasty penalties for those caught lugging bodies around churchyards in the dark.”
“True. But those types are generally taking bodies out, not bringing them in.”
The surgeon gave a soft laugh. “Still. What if the workmen had decided to take one last look around the crypt before brick ing it up? The body would have been found thirty years ago.”
“At which point suspicion would have fallen on the priest in residence—namely Sir Nigel’s brother. Actually, when you think about it, it would have been a clever way for someone with a grudge against the Prescotts to get back at both brothers: kill Sir Nigel, and then set up Francis Prescott to take the blame.”
“Except that the body wasn’t found.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
“The problem with that scenario,” said Gibson, working on his pork with a surgeon’s thoroughness, “is that Sir Nigel was a big man—not an easy burden to shift when you’re dealing with a deadweight. If you ask me, he was killed in that crypt.”
Sebastian watched his friend’s flawless dissection of his pork ribs with something approaching awe. “Two men could have lifted the body. Two strong men.”
“They could have,” Gibson acknowledged.
“The problem with having Sir Nigel killed in the crypt is that it then begs the question, What the devil was a forty-year-old baronet doing down in the crypt of the village church in the middle of the night?”
Gibson took a drink of ale. “What if someone he loved had recently died? Someone who was buried in the crypt? He could have been grief-stricken enough to want to be near them.”
“From what I’ve heard of Sir Nigel’s character, it seems unlikely. Although I suppose it could be possible.” Sebastian thought about those moldering stacks of coffins, the dark-stained bones and grinning skulls. “Ghoulish, but possible.”
“You did say he was a member of the Hellfire Club, did you not? Black magic rituals and all that.”
“Yes. Except . . .”
“Except what?”
“It occurs to me that the gate at the top of the stairs would have been kept padlocked. If he broke the lock, it would have been remarked upon. So he must have had a key.”
“The living was in his patronage, right?” said Gibson. “He may well have had a key. If he left the gate to the crypt open behind him, his killer could have followed him down, killed him, then taken the key from his body and secured the padlock again when he left, with none being the wiser.”
Sebastian sat for a time, drinking his ale in thoughtful silence. “There is one other aspect to all this we’ve yet to consider.”
Gibson looked up questioningly.
“There were originally five Prescott brothers, with Sir Nigel the eldest and the Bishop the youngest. The three middle brothers all chose to make the Army their career. By 1782, all three were dead, leaving Francis Prescott as his brother’s heir presumptive.”
“What are you suggesting? That the Bishop killed his older brother for the inheritance?”
“It does happen. Although I must admit, it sounds decidedly out of character in this case.”
Gibson finished picking the ribs clean and shoved his plate away. “If it is true, it must have been something of a shock to the Bishop when Lady Prescott gave birth to a posthumous heir some months later.”
Sebastian drained his tankard. “And none of it explains who killed the Bishop himself, or why.”
“Could have been the son, Sir Peter. He discovered his uncle killed his father for the inheritance, so he killed his uncle in revenge.”
“I don’t think so. I know Sir Peter.”
“You knew him as a boy. People change.” Gibson watched Sebastian push to his feet. “What do you plan to do next?”
“Drive out to the Grange in the morning and talk to Lady Prescott.”
“What do you think she can tell you?”
“I’m not sure. What her husband was doing down in that crypt would be a nice place to start.”
That evening, Sebastian took a copy of Aeschylus’s The Libation Bearers from his shelves and settled down to read with a brace of candles and a glass of port at his elbow.
The second in the famous Athenian playwright’s bloody trilogy on the curse of the House of Atreus, The Libation Bearers told an agonizing tale of murder and vengeance and hints of madness. But Sebastian could find nothing in that ancient Greek myth that seemed of any relevance to the death of the Bishop of London. He was halfway through the third act when Kat came to him.
Ushered into the drawing room by Morey, she brought with her the scent of beeswax and oranges and the cool air of the night. She paused just inside the door, one hand pushing back the hood of her cherry velvet cloak while she waited for the majordomo to discreetly bow himself from the room. The light from the candles gleamed over her pale cheeks and the shiny dark fall of her hair, and she was so beautiful she took his breath.
“I have an answer to your question,” she said.
The book slid to the floor as he rose to his feet. He did not step toward her. “And?”
“There has been speculation for some time that the Bishop of London hid a secret of some sort from his past. But none of the attempts by various agents to discover the nature of that secret were successful.”
Sebastian met the brilliant blue intensity of her gaze. “You’re certain?”
“Yes.” She turned to go.
He stopped her. “May I offer you something? A cup of tea? A glass of wine?” What he was really saying was, Stay.
She hesitated, a sad smile playing about her lips. “No, thank you.” You know that would not be wise.
He stared at her from across the room. Yes, you’re right. But he still couldn’t stop himself from saying, “How are you, Kat? In truth? Does Yates treat you well?”
She gave a faint shrug. “He is never anything but a gentleman. We go our own ways.”
As hard as it was for Sebastian to imagine her with another man, it was even harder for him to think of her trapped in a loveless marriage. He said, “It doesn’t sound like much of a marriage.”
“It’s the kind of marriage I want. We are friends.”
“I would like to see you happy, and in love.”
She gave a sad smile. “And you, Sebastian? Hendon is desperate for an heir.”
“I will take no woman to wife unless I can give her a whole heart.” Or unless I must, he thought, to preserve her honor.
She nodded, and drew her hood back up over her hair.
“Thank you,” he said with a painful formality that hurt him almost as much as anything else.
“I spoke to Gibson,” she said, her hand on the door, as if she knew she should leave but could not quite bring herself to go. Through all that had happened in the past ten months, she and the Irish surgeon had remained friends. “He told me about Obadiah Slade.” She hesitated. “Please be careful, Sebastian.”
Somehow, he managed to give her a jaunty smile. “I’m always careful.”
“No. You’re not. You’re never careful. That’s what worries me.”
After she had gone, he retrieved his book from the floor. But the words swam before his eyes and he imagined the scent of her lingered still in the room, like a sweet memory just beyond his grasp.
The Reverend Malcolm Earnshaw sank before the high altar of St. Margaret’s, his hands clasped in supplication before him as he let out a low moan.
Beneath his aching knees, the worn stone paving of the aisle felt cold and cruelly hard, but he welcomed the pain as a kind of penance. The jewel-toned stained glass of the soaring windows of the apse before him showed only black against black, while the distant recesses of the church were lost in the gloom of the night. He let his head fall back, his t
hroat working to swallow as he stared up at the intricately carved groins of the ancient vaults above him, alive now with strange, ghostly shadows cast by the flickering flames of the two heavy candles flanking the altar.
He squeezed his eyes shut, his lips moving in a soundless prayer. Oh, Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. Thou knowest my lying down and my rising up; thou understandest my thoughts afar off. . . .
It was so difficult to know what to do in such a situation. One shrank from accidentally implicating the innocent, but what if . . . What if the innocent were not truly innocent? How was one to know? Never had Earnshaw felt more in need of guidance and wisdom.
“ ’Thou compassest my path and my lying down,’ ” he whispered, finding solace in speaking the words aloud. “ ‘Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Whither shall I flee from thy presence?’ ”
At some point, the rain had started up again. He could hear it beating on the slate roof above him, and he shivered with the cold and the damp and a quick leap of unaccountable fear.
“ ‘Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God,’ ” he said, his voice rising shrilly. “ ‘Depart from me therefore, ye bloody men.’ ”
From somewhere startlingly near came a soft thump.
The Reverend pushed to his feet, his knees creaking, his breath bunching hot in his throat as he whirled about to peer helplessly into the gloom. “Who’s there?”
His own voice echoed back at him. He swallowed hard, feeling an odd mixture of foolishness and terror. “Is anybody there?”
The urge to bolt toward the west door was strong. But the fat beeswax candles flanking the altar were atrociously dear; he never should have lit them. It had been a foolish extravagance, however spooked he might be.
Bent on extinguishing the flames quickly, he lurched up the step toward the altar, stumbling in his haste. Then he threw another frightened glance toward the nave and whispered, “Oh, my God.”
Chapter 22
SATURDAY, 11 JULY 1812